3 Wheel Alignments in 7 days

[rogerkiu]

We drive RHD cars in Hong Kong too, never heard 'caster' problem before. In Hong Kong, as I remember and know, it was a case reported one or two years ago that a brand new E46 3er imported by BMW HK had similar problem (do not remember if it was pulling left or right), BMW HK could not solve the problem by all means. I do not know what happened to the car finally. Recently, I have seen several E70 4.8i X5s on road, never heard any problem like above said here. I will keep my eyes open to see if similar problem occurs in Hong Kong.

[watrob]

Just had a call from the dealer, I think they are going to try changing all the Dunlop 20" RFT tires, I think they are just changing things for the sake of it.

They put 18" wheels & tires on it last week and it still pulled to the left, so changing the tires won't work.

The fact of the matter is the distance between the front left & rear left wheels is less than the distance between the front right & rear right wheels, this is fine on a LHD car but on a RHD cars this needs to be reversed.

The problem with the X5 is they have not allowed any adjustment to occur to pull the left front wheel forward and push the right front wheel back and with the combination of Adaptive Drive & Active Steer as the car remains level at all times when driving through corners & on straight roads.

Also, when the X5 on a slanting road (slants to the left) does the Adaptive Drive actually keeps the car level and thats where the problem is coming from. Is it jacking up the lefthand side of the X5 and droping down on the righthand side to keep the car level, thus changing the suspension settings which because of the present castor settings makes the X5 pull left. The whole lefthand side of the suspension alters when you jack car up, you see it when you change a flat tire

A normal suspesion X5 won't show the problem as the car does not remain level when driving through corners or on uneven roads.

It boils down to the fact that no testing was done as the these RHD cars with Adaptive Drive & Active Steer were only just manufactured in mid May 07 and they had not allowed for the opposite camber on our roads. I think they just got caught out.

[jamesboags]

That's too bad.. I didn't get adaptive nor active steering (nor sports suspension) as I considered the handling of the base suspension should be enough for the driving that I do... Not sure how many Aussie drivers have opted for the Adaptive Drive.. for me it was just simply too much $$$. Good Luck ... what loaner have they given you ?

[watrob]

Originally Posted by jamesboags

That's too bad.. I didn't get adaptive nor active steering (nor sports suspension) as I considered the handling of the base suspension should be enough for the driving that I do... Not sure how many Aussie drivers have opted for the Adaptive Drive.. for me it was just simply too much $$$. Good Luck ... what loaner have they given you ?

I have this feeling thay cannot fix it, they are going to have to design a castor kit and that's not going to happen overnight. It's been over 2 weeks since I reported the problem and they will need to develop & manufacture new bushes with camber offset so to drag the left front wheel forward & the front right wheel back.

I am not sure even if they are willing to go to that extreme to develop a kit. I have given them until Friday and if a remedy has not been found I am giving them the X5 back.

I will order a new one from September production because they would probably have fixed the problem in the update model or one would hope they have.

[jamesboags]

There is a member on here called Dean Phillips who lives in the UK and has adaptive drive.. not sure what his experience is with it.. doesn't look like he has active steering.

[watrob]

Originally Posted by jamesboags

There is a member on here called Dean Phillips who lives in the UK and has adaptive drive.. not sure what his experience is with it.. doesn't look like he has active steering.

Would be interesting to see if he has the poblem as well, wonder what wheels & tires he is running. If he does not have a problem it is either the active steer combination or the X5 is just out those few mm in the front end somewhere due to mass manufacture.

I have a friend who had a vibration in there car in 3rd &
4th gear, the put new wheels & tires, tried everything. After complaining for 12 months they replaced the 3rd & 4th gears in the gearbox, problem fixed.

When they checked the cogs against the new set they looked fine but the must have been just that little bit out of balance. mass manufacture.

[watrob]

Originally Posted by jamesboags

There is a member on here called Dean Phillips who lives in the UK and has adaptive drive.. not sure what his experience is with it.. doesn't look like he has active steering.

Hi Mate,

Just had a call from my dealer, the head tech that flew in from BMW and went over my X5 on Tuesday has done a full report and emailed it to the suspension dept tech heads at BMW Germany.

They say it will be about 2-3 days before he hears back, I told them the clocks ticking. So I have another 350klm run this weekend with a car that won't drive straight.

[jamesboags]

Is there any chance they can "disable" active steer and see how the car behaves ? Btw my car arrives in the Sydney on Sunday !!!!!

[rodybmw]

I remember from a couple of years back when the first E60's came out some people were complaining that the Active Steering was trying to "correct" or "compensate" when they were driving in areas of cross wind and this was making the cars pull to one side or be unstable. I never had that with my E60 because by the time I got mine I think they changed some of the software to fix the problem. However, if I remember correctly there was a way to disable the auto correction feature of Active steering, even though the main feature of Active steering (which is the variable steering ratio) can not be disabled. I think the way to disable the auto correction (if I remember correctly) is to push and hold the DSC/DTC button for 3 seconds until DSC/DTC is completely disabled. You may want to try that to see if it makes a difference. Maybe A.S. is trying to compensate for something which steers the wheels the wrong way.

I don't know whether disabling the DSC/DTC will deactivate the steering correction feature of A.S. on the E70......for that matter I don't know whether the E70 or even the newer software revisions of the E60 still have the steering correction feature or whether BMW has gotten rid of it altogether, but I think it's worth a try.

[watrob]

Originally Posted by rodybmw

I remember from a couple of years back when the first E60's came out some people were complaining that the Active Steering was trying to "correct" or "compensate" when they were driving in areas of cross wind and this was making the cars pull to one side or be unstable. I never had that with my E60 because by the time I got mine I think they changed some of the software to fix the problem. However, if I remember correctly there was a way to disable the auto correction feature of Active steering, even though the main feature of Active steering (which is the variable steering ratio) can not be disabled. I think the way to disable the auto correction (if I remember correctly) is to push and hold the DSC/DTC button for 3 seconds until DSC/DTC is completely disabled. You may want to try that to see if it makes a difference. Maybe A.S. is trying to compensate for something which steers the wheels the wrong way.

I don't know whether disabling the DSC/DTC will deactivate the steering correction feature of A.S. on the E70......for that matter I don't know whether the E70 or even the newer software revisions of the E60 still have the steering correction feature or whether BMW has gotten rid of it altogether, but I think it's worth a try.

Hi,

I think the head tech that flew in from BMW checked that previously when the dealer had the car last week.

I have driven the X5 in right & left cross winds a couple of weeks ago (30 knot winds) made no difference. They have checked out the X5 pretty thoroughly. The problem is they caanot move the lefthand front wheel forward as there is no castor adjust, the X5 is actuaaly not aligned correctly and they cannot adjust it out.

Its like a lefthand car with righthand drive, or the monocock is bent from a assembly line prang (thats happen before)